Review: Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded

Originally released in Japan as an episodic mobile game, Square Enix made the game into a full length version for the Nintendo DS in 2011. Although it did very little to advance the game’s plot it did provide a little more background information on some of the mysteries in the story.

Taking place after the events of Kingdom Hearts II, Mickey finds a mysterious message in one of Sora’s journals…

‘Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it’

So Mickey digitizes the journal and creates a data version of Sora to help unlock the mystery.

Meanwhile Maleficent returns as the main antagonist. Now without a base of operations and no army following the disappearance of the Heartless, Maleficent decides to conquer the data worlds and flood the real worlds with darkness so it is up to Data Sora to stop her.

This game sees several elements from Birth By Sleep return, such as the command deck and item melding to create more powerful attacks. We also see the return of worlds from the original Kingdom Hearts and Castle Oblivion from Chain of Memories.

The only new main features are the debugging mini game, where Sora fights the boss of that world and the way Sora unlocks new abilities with a circuit board like system which, when certain requirements are met, can be used to upgrade Sora’s strength, defense and magic power. But it also unlocks new abilities for him.

This game was created as a filler to keep players tided over while the next entries in the series were being made, but it did little to advance the overall story and seemed a bit repetitive sometimes, so it is not my favourite entry into the series.